A commonly used error correcting technique is the Reed-Solomon error correcting code. For an overview and for applications of Reed-Solomon codes reference is made to “Reed-Solomon Codes and Their Applications”, Stephen B. Wicker, Vijay R. Bhargava, IEEE Press, 1994 and “Digital Communications, Fundamentals and Applications”, Second Edition, Bernard Sklar, Prentice Hall PTR, 2001.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,517,509 shows a Reed-Solomon decoder in the form of a Euclid's algorithm operation circuit in which division polynomials are repeatedly divided by residues resulting from the division process of dividend polynomials and division polynomials until the degree of residues of the division process satisfies a prescribed condition.
The Euclid's algorithm operation circuit comprises register groups for storing dividend polynomials and division polynomials, respectively, a feedback loop for storing residues resulting from the division process of the dividend polynomials by the division polynomials, a shifter for shifting contents of registers, and an exchanger for exchanging coefficients of the dividend polynomials with coefficients of the division polynomials.
The decoder comprises a syndrome operator for calculating syndromes from received code-words, an erasure locator generator for generating erasure locator data from erasure locator flags synchronous with received code-words, a modified syndrome generator for generating modified syndromes, an erasure locator polynomial generator for generating erasure locator polynomials from the erasure locator data, a Euclid's algorithm operation circuit for obtaining error locator polynomials and error value polynomials, a Chien searcher for obtaining error locations and error values and a correction processor for correcting errors of the received code-word. The modified syndrome generator and the erasure locator polynomial generator are used jointly with the Euclid's algorithm operation circuit.
Other approaches for implementing a Reed-Solomon decoder are know from U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,991,911, 6,032,283, 6,304,994 B1, 5,537,426 and EP 0 821 493 A1 and EP 0 942 421 A1.
Usually the computation of the modified syndrome polynomial is performed by computation of the product of the syndrome and erasure polynomials. This computation requires additional cycles and computation time to obtain the modified syndrome polynomial.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide for a method of soft-decision decoding of Reed-Solomon codes where the calculation of the modified syndrome polynomial does not require additional cycles.